SANITATION
School sanitation needs more
THAN RHETORIC
The provision of better sanitation directly impacts children’s learning abilities, as it mainly affects learners’ enjoyment of the environment – which enables the enjoyment of other rights such as the right to education
The safety and healthy development of South Africa’s children are crucial and should be prioritised. Access to proper water and sanitation is a basic right that children in underdeveloped apartheid areas struggle government, as to have. well as limited public funds during the postBy Ziyanda Majodina
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outh Africa’s school infrastructure still poses a great threat to the safety and development of its children. In developed areas, the provision of classrooms, electricity, water and sanitation facilities has been extensive but nearly the opposite has happened for underprivileged areas. Taking into account the huge school infrastructure backlogs in the majority of schools built by the
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apartheid years, improving the provision and quality of school infrastructure has proved to be a daunting task. Regardless of far-reaching praise for the country’s progressive Constitution – which entrenches the unqualified right to basic education – as well as consistent lip service advocating the importance of basic education for alleviating poverty and inequality, the South African democratic state has failed to make toilets in schools safe for schoolchildren. According to Section27, a publicinterest law centre that uses and
develops the law to promote and advance human rights, students and teachers suffer the most atrocious conditions with the sanitation facilities provided and the rights of children are infringed upon on a daily basis. This is reinforced by the July 2021 report on water and sanitation by the South African Human Rights Commission, which revealed that over a million learners and teachers either have no access to sanitation or still use pit toilets.
